Slain Pride
by Chasing Silmarils
Summary: "Thoughts had twined like ivy through his mind, flecked with vivid spatters of muted emotion. Grief became the kinsman of a looming, ominous fate like a billowing storm-cloud towering above, turgid and dark. In naught but irony had Túrin Turambar been named the Master of Doom." Túrin's death intertwines with memories of fate.


**Slain Pride**

* * *

Like the intertwining of a bloodline, searing in hues of alluring crimson, it seemed as if the _seregon_ blossoms were obscuring all sight. Túrin Turambar was entrapped within the dull, gaping horror of the void, swollen with the promises of a tarnished legacy. Many among Men poured forth with eloquent words of the days of old, that the determined fury of the fervent, reckless Noldor had been scarlet. Though they spoke in truth, perhaps, Túrin's sorrow was red, but a hazy, dreamlike red, a suspended existence within the chasms of throbbing horror. It was the wrenching, tearing agony of a blunt blade beneath his skin, unearthing an empire of crimson blood. Every connection within his numb, motionless body had been severed forcibly, sundered in a painless agreement to let those sickening moments pass unheard, unseen. Had his sword been frigid within his hand, bereft of its malevolent and mocking cruelty, he would have not felt the turmoil of those careening, helpless moments. Thoughts had twined like ivy, the sort that would cause his bloodstained hands to pulse with pain, through his mind, flecked with vivid spatters of muted emotion. Grief became the kinsman of a looming, ominous fate like a billowing storm-cloud towering above, turgid and dark. In naught but irony had Túrin been named the Master of Doom, for memories of unspoken horrors newly realized drifted like spider's threads in his hands.

Sorrow was the numb defeat gasping and drowning within him; likewise was grief, but grief had an acute focus, strengthening the likelihood of weeping, and yet numbness afflicted Túrin to counteract such sadness. The volatile stew of emotion seething within him had been invigorated with guilt and regret further than the profound and yet shallow sort that had so often tainted his days. He had consented to his ardent, reckless fury, the sort that had left a fool's bones snapped as an ignoble feast for the tendrils of stream and the jagged crags of rock, the wine of their collective impetuosity still brash within his throat. No, this was the grief of one who had committed an unspeakable wrong without his own knowledge of it, and it was the deepest sort of grief. It was the self-preserving desperation behind his accursed blade that had felled a friend rather than an adversary, and oh, it was the eternal blindness clouding his thought when the souls enamored so greatly of each other had sprung of the same might.

 _She was my sister, my kinswoman,_ Túrin thought numbly, entranced by the erratic, almost panicked flow of the same ravenous river that had taken the woman whom he had loved in lack of knowledge. Its gaping maw was jagged with bloodthirsty teeth, teeth that had caressed the flesh that had been withered beneath his hands like a wilting flower selfishly preserved between scraps of crumbling parchment. Oh, what was the doom of he who had lain with one of near kin with their consent and without the burden of the truth? What was the torment reserved within the unknown, unspoken fates wrought for Men for the vile wretch who had been called Túrin Turambar? The weregild of an Elven lord would not repay the hideous debt of the torment that he had given himself in those moments.

Diversions of thought sundered, shattering, separated those piercing truths; he carved ornate words from nothingness to dispel his anguish, fluttering through his mind on ragged wings, but he banished them to the depths of his growing void, the harsh and caustic words emblazoned like a thrall's brand across his mind - a thrall, and Túrin had once not known the meaning of such a word, such innocence that had been sullied! Túrin Turambar, the prideful and reckless master of every doom - oh, mocking name! - but his own, had wedded his sister, conceived a child with her, the product of blindness and uncovered misery that writhed secretly like an infestation of pallid insects beneath a slab of mighty stone. Fate had deemed that such a child would not be born, and perhaps those were far less than the ill tidings he had known.

And unwillingly, traitorously in flickering deception, Túrin's mind wavered into an echo of the time when he had still reigned over the realm of fate and the wordless woman upon the beloved grave had been only the maiden of tears.

* * *

Lacy fronds of quivering lightning lashed through a tumultuous sky, illuminating a half-slain, collapsed form strewn in a collection of pallid limbs over the earthen tomb of one who had approached doom in the distant reaches of Túrin's path. Like a wraith, she was arrayed across the grave, pale as the scythe of the moon's sliver, gleaming like a well-forged blade tiny enough to balance upon his fingertips, and the maiden possessed this same delicate grace. Rain bedecked her skin as the sky raged above, spatters of chill sending shudders through the body bereft of garments. Túrin was transfixed with the intricate, wobbling patterns of water that graced her fragile beauty. Strength indeed was within her, however, both physical and within her mind, but the latter fortitude had fled to make way for the weeping, the lack of speech and discerned torment.

Perhaps if Túrin touched her, she would shatter as if she was a tiny figure imprisoned within glass, and his hesitation was ensnared within the vile clutches of an aching, echoing sort of familiarity. His glimpse of her eyes was almost taken for granted, that they would flutter open to reveal such an exact hue. She was a ragged feather within his arms, shuddering with the throes of cold, her flaxen-gold hair in errant locks strewn across her heaving chest. Beneath the searing lightning, Túrin marveled in half horror at the emptiness of the yawning void within her eyes. It was the vivid, bold sigil of remembering naught, all defined thought blurring into nothingness, and it sent an echo of numb fear, as if he had glanced into the glaring eyes of an unknown, formidable deity standing in wrath above. Gladly, he surrendered his cloak to that trembling, moth-pale creature, those peering eyes, the wavering hands. They beckoned him, drawing a half-grimacing smile to his wind-chapped lips as a sort of welcoming.

An unbidden thought of Beren's serendipitous meeting of the legendarily entrancing Lúthien in those moonlight-spattered moments of gauzy night mist sprang into Túrin's mind, the beauty that had transfixed the hapless, fated Man to remain sundered from that fair being in her unmatched glory. _The maiden loved so dearly by Beren could not have been as lovely as this woman,_ Túrin thought almost recklessly, banishing the thought immediately. _No, no, I must merely give her hospitality, shelter, and sustenance, naught more without my own willingness,_ he amended, reason a welcome guest within his half-forgotten mind. Yet the woman seemed achingly familiar, perhaps within the blurred days that had been his past, brought into agonizing focus with each sorrow upon him. Eyes so similar to those, it seemed, had danced with fragile laughter, warm and steadfast, and those tresses ensnaring the glint of sun upon wavering grass had graced another's shoulders. _Perhaps..._ and yet Túrin remembered nothing.

Surely those eyes remembered nothing of the pale years winding into tree-shadowed shelter, solitude and stoic loneliness. Surely those eyes were not those that he had seen before; it was certainly madness. Yet as the days thundered forward in a fervent rage, Túrin _knew,_ oh, _knew,_ that those eyes had been Húrin's gift to his daughter, to the sister Turambar had not truly known until their eyes met beneath the irate lashes of white flame.

* * *

He was the master of the very doom that ensnared them in those moments. Túrin was the rampart of protection, comfort, and healing, yet he was more than these: beloved. Beloved, valiant and steadfast in unknown, self-wrought torment... This was the unspoken soliloquy of a fated man, helpless to the days that crept nearer in billows of smoke, in searing flame and a smooth, beguiling voice, in inevitable knowledge that their love was an unknown wrong that could not be unwound from the tapestry of their once-noble people. The Men of his lands had fallen to the clutches of chafing fetters and noisome, entrapping thralldom, and yet the thralldom of Túrin Turambar and his beloved was not that of torment and forced labors, emaciated bodies bedecked in ragged raiment. No, their imprisonment was within their foolish love, and it was torment, torment-

Yet perhaps there were days that he could cling to desperately, enamored of their passing moments, entranced by the loveliness that soon was slain within them. Night was not within them, no terror to choke their sleep, no glimmers of treacherous moonlight dappling pallid skin in an echo of that rain-gleaming night. These days were of the summer, verdant and glorious with life springing about them and love boldly declared, love that they strove to prove in triumph beneath the elated joy of the sun's scattered rays like blades of the purest gold, the final offerings of the slain trees that had spawned beauty, bloodshed, and dispossession. None of these touched their days, those days when horror did not encroach upon their borders, those days in which there was nothing to occupy Túrin's once distressed mind but their ardent devotion towards each other, the passion that was not yet tarnished with those echoing, shameful words, accursed and truthful; no, those words had not yet been spoken, and Túrin was obstinate to allow himself to languish within the days of ignorance embodied within those superfluous, vapid days.

No other could coax the glorious, thoughtless mirth from Turambar as his beloved could - oh, his kinswoman, now and ever, and it mattered not as the sunrise trickled in gold-laced autumn shades of vibrantly glorified death, those first promising moments when she had asked his name beneath the waning sunlight, comforting, a lullaby to bring them into the peaceful sleep of their gentle love, gentle in a way that Túrin had not known. Those days had quickly been scattered into a glorious prelude to their sun-dappled summer, merging in words and body in their passionate ardor. Each day of old had been slain without a care, each shadow like a billowing cloak of thick fabric upon their shoulders forsaken, each echo of a forgotten torment and shame banished, the humiliation that they would recall too soon. Her name was of weeping, but those days held none, and Túrin clung to them with each blossom that bedecked her flaxen hair, with each verdant vow of their love.

* * *

How ironic, how very ironic, that the one who was a brother in heart to the Maiden of Tears was enamored of her but scorned without contempt, while likewise, her own kinsman by blood should be the one beside her committing the indelible sin of love. Yes, he was there in the aching hours of lashing storms above, of weary days and nimble feet helplessly motionless, when she was overcome by those intangible, fleeting flickers of memory, memory far too vague to know of the flawless loathing incarnate in the plots of a lord of hatred upon his black throne in Angband, far too vague to discern the horrified, unspoken anguish of a father imprisoned in mockery rather than thralldom as his children allowed the bloodline of the House of Hador to flow on yet more ardently together, as the unknowing figures of his vulnerable, foolish little children kissed in a manner that no brethren should.

Yet Túrin knew not of this, neither in those sunlit memory-days of gleaming ardor nor in his precarious turmoil perched helplessly before the raging water that had swallowed torment, and so the days passed, fey, growing pale and thin with silently pleading eyes. Doom crept nearer, nearer, and their blindness was a jest to fate.

* * *

Now, Túrin knew that begging to allow his accursed sword to feast upon his crimson blood was a futile endeavor, for nothing could withhold the formidable, fey glory of his death. Yes, death it was, death as the waters raged below jagged slabs of knife-like rock in a lashing tumult of gray tongues that had swept across the fragile body of the one who he had loved in folly. Oh, and his wrong was not in that he had loved his sister in that manner, but that though this gentle devotion was now mingled with bitter shame, vile disgust, and defeat, none of these could erase the way that his heart still yearned helplessly for his kinswoman to be once more at his side. No comfort or remembered days would alleviate the wrathful tumult of agony within him, the self-sundering as the glaring blade mocked him with memories. A wretch, a cur, slaying friends and laying with his kin; Túrin Turambar's shame would not go unpunished by any hands, even his own.

It was not of his own descent into humiliation and fate that Túrin thought of as the sword sundered the fragile bonds of his flesh, sinking willingly to part his parchment skin and to release tainted blood. No, it was the eternal remembrance of this folly, this thralldom within doom, the fetters that had seared the glory in hideous brands from the hearts of Men, and it was the knowledge. It was not knowledge of kinsmen's blood intertwining, of indelible deeds of vile purity, but it was the knowledge that as he shattered, his people were strangling.

For the valiant were imprisoned, and the triumphant despaired.


End file.
